Swimming in Other Streams Alternative Currents in Dallas's

Religious Traditions

BY J. GoRDON MELTON

~e are two ways oflooking at religion in the state oITexas. In the first instance, we begin

with the singular dominance ofTexas by just three religious groups-the Southern Baptists,

the United Methodists, and the Roman Catholics.Their membership accounts for about half

of the state's population, with a few additional groups-the Churches of Christ, the National

Baptists (three groups), the African Methodists (three groups), the Presbyterians, two Lutheran

groups, the Episcopalians, and several Pentecostal groups-filling out the next tier of religious

Texans. One could tell the story of Texas religion by limiting the account to these dozen

groups and do very little, if any, injustice to it.

Additionally, this approach reflects the reality of religion at the national level, where over

half of the American population has chosen to be members of a mere twenty-five Christian

denominations, each of which has at least one million members. Upon examination they

are seen to represent the current spectrum of Christian belief and practice. Their position is

strengthened by considering the forty additional denominations that have at least 100,000

members and which also present the san1e spectrum of Christian theology, social stances, and

public behavior. The worldview represented by the 25 big denominations is identical to the

worldview held by the additional 900+ Christian denominations in America, which together

include between 70 and 80 percent of the American population. 1

14 LEGACIES Spring 2016

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That being said, there is a second, and I would argue, far more interesting way of viewing Amer­

ican religion in general, and Texas religion in particular, which focuses on its diversity. America

is home to more than 2,000 different religious groups, some 1,000 Christian denominations and another 1,000+ non-Christian groups, including

some 300+ groups that use Christian language and symbols, but in ways not recognized by the

larger Christian churches. Falling into that cate­gory are, for example, the Jehovah's Witnesses and

the Latter-Day SaintS, both of whom profess a set of unique doctrines that alienate them from

the main stream of Christian organizations, and the Christian Scientists and the Unity School of

Christianity, which use Christian language but who pour into that language such distinct mean­

ings that it makes any dialogue with more tradi­tional Christians difficult. 2

Defining the Religious Fringe Defining what one might consider alternative

religion, or the fringe of the religious community, is a questionable task at best, but in this case, given

the super majority now possessed by the tradi­tional Christian community, one can more easily find a position within that conmmnity from which

to view the rather distinctive alternative religious strean1S flowing parallel to it, always with a possi­

bility, however slight, of merging into the main­stream in the future as have previous alternative

strearm. From that perspective, a set of Christian groups that have attempted to redefine the m.ain­

stream of the Western Christian tradition, begin­ning with its complex trinitarian view of the

Godhead, make up the first alternative stream of Texas religion. And beginning with the majority

Christian conununity as the mainstream, one can begin to see all of the alternative currents of religi-

LEGACIES Spring 2016 15

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osity flowing alongside it, each offering the public other waters upon which to sail their ship of faith.

By far the most visible alternatives are now found in the streams of the world's religions that have come to Texas in recent decades from Asia in the form of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and the several smaller world religious traditions such

as Sikhism, Taoism, and Jainism. Judaism, the first non-Christian religion established in the state, has a unique place that defies most of the insider­outsider ways of looking at American religion. Joining the non-Christian alternatives on the reli­gious landscape are the more homegrown vari­eties of the Western Esoteric tradition. Esotericism, a form of religion that continues the Gnosticism of first-century Mediterranean culture, received a new beginning in the seventeenth century and now claims a large, if largely invisible, following in the West under such names as Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, Spiritualism, ritual magick, and Neo­Paganism.

Finally, defining the "religious" alternatives

would be incomplete without some mention of the most radical of options, the atheists, those who deny

the existence of any deity, and wish to construct a largely secular society. Going under names such as freethinker, secularist, and humanist, the non-theists represent a very different approach to religion, many wanting nothing to do with the spiritual realm in any way. Others have moved to an accommodation

with religion--affrrming its positive qualities of promoting personal serenity, building community, and supporting altruistic ideals-while eschewing its supernatural dogmas, tendencies toward authori­tarianism, and superfluous regulations.

The Alternative Streants in DFW History

What would become Dallas was settled in the 1840s, and Dallas County was created in 1846,just a year after Texas joined the Union. Meanwhile, Fort Worth opened as an Army outpost to the West a mere three years later. Methodists moved

16 LEGACIES Spring 2016

in with the early settlers, the first area congre­gation, now known as Webb Chapel United Methodist Church, being formed in 1845,just as Methodism split and work in Texas came under the aegis of the newly created Methodist Epis­

copal Church, South.A Fort Worth District of the Texas Conference was designated in 1852. Soon

afterwards, the Presbyterians and the Restoration movement arrived.3 The frrst Episcopal service was held in Dallas in 1856. But the real growth of Dallas's religious community would come during the decade irnmediately after the Civil War begin­

ning with the founding of First Baptist Church (1868), the Norwegian Lutheran church, several

African-American congregations, and the first Congregational church (1877). Roman Cath­olic settlement came a little bit later, there being

only one Catholic fanllly known to be residing in Dallas in the years in1ITlediately after the war.

But steady growth through the next quarter of a century justified the formation of the Diocese of Dallas in 1890.4

While mainstream Christianity was by far the largest segment of the religious community, its total membership represented only a small minority of

the population, a situation that prompted multiple activities among the different denominations

aimed at converting members of the larger public to Christianity and recruiting them to church membership. That the majority of residents were

religiously unattached also provided space for additional new religious movements to emerge. The first of these new movements would be the Seventh-Day Adventists with their emphasis on the approaching end of the social order and demands that worship be on Saturday (the Sabbath) rather than Sunday. The SDAs would find an1ple support in and around Dallas and eventually locate their college in nearby Keene, Texas.

The real growth of an alternative religious community, however, would wait until the 1890s. The newly organized Church of Christ, Scien­tist, popularly known as Christian Science, for example, opened work in Galveston at the end

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of the 1880s, and showed its first signs of support in Dallas a few years later. A salesman traveling through the city in 1896 reported to the Chris­tina Science Journal that the work was "growing both in numbers as well as consecration." The Church of Christ, Scientist, was one of several churches that advocated a "spiritual" (i.e., alle­

gorical) approach to Bible interpretation. Chris­tian Scientists affirmed all of the more familiar Christian language and symbols, while pouring very different meanings into both. From her own experience ofbodily healing, founder Mary Baker Eddy had discovered God as the only reality, while denying any metaphysical reality to evil, and went on to expand upon her initial revelation in a new book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,

that would come to stand beside the Bible as an authoritative text for believers.

Christian Science would build a strong orga­nization headed by Eddy and administered from its headquarters in Boston. Those who opted for a more decentralized approach to the metaphysical Christianity she had originally advocated created a parallel movement known as New Thought, the most successful New Thought group being the

Unity School of Christianity based in Kansas City. Unity, building on the readership ofits two maga­zines, Unity and Daily J/VcJrd, found some initial support in Texas in the 1890s but would wait until after World War II to show significant prosperity.

A century before Eddy, seer Emanuel Sweden­borg (1688-1772), the son of a Swedish Lutheran bishop, clainJed contact with the angelic world, maintaining that its inhabitants had taught him a new spiritual meaning to the words of Scripture. Based upon that esoteric knowledge, he founded the Church of the New Jerusalem, the first new religious body to migrate to the new United States after the American Revolution. By the 1890s it had found its way to Texas and to Dallas, the first believer of note being former Methodist minister Leonides Lantz.After being deposed by the Meth­odists, Lantz issued a Swedenborgian manifesto in the form of seven new articles of faith, which he published in 1889 in The Galveston News. A state Swedenborgian organization was founded the next year.

The small Church of the New Jerusalem would almost in1m.ediately be thrown into a crucial role in the state, being organized coinci-

LEGACIES Spring 2016 1 7

The First Unitarian Church of Dallas constructed its first church at the southeast corner of Commerce and Pearl in 190 I.

dentally with the People's Party, a populist move­ment that would become the most successful third party movement in Texas political history. The party organized in Dallas on August 18, 1891, and chose as its candidate for governor, former judge Thomas Nugent (1841-1895),another Methodist turned Swedenborgian. Presenting a straightfor­ward moral appeal to his cause, he was able to claim 25 percent of the vote and establish the party's place as a genuine option for people ready to forsake the dominant Democrats.5

Today Dallas and Fort Worth are home to a broad array of Esoteric and metaphysical groups

that have grown out of the tradition pioneered by the Swedenborgians and Christian Scientists. Most remain small and largely invisible on the landscape, operating out of rented and borrowed facilities, although readily accessible to individ­uals who are drawn to their esoteric teachings. Included are such groups as the Triangle Lodge of the AMORC Rosicrucians (the largest Rosi­crucian group in America), the Dallas Study Group affiliated with the Theosophical Society of America, the Texas Local Council Covenant of the Goddess ( on_e of the more visible Wiccan groups in North Texas), and the several recently formed Spiritist churches founded by immigrants from Brazil.

18 LEGACIES Spring 2016

Metaphysical Christianity offered one alter­native to mainstream religion in Dallas and Fort Worth, but a more skeptical approach to Christian orthodoxy also appeared in the latter decades of the nineteenth century. Surprising to many who experience the state as an integral part of the Bible Belt, Texas was an early site for organized Unbe­

lief, which flourished in the German colonies of the Hill Country in the 1850s. The first national freethought organization, the National Liberal League, was founded in 1876 and soon had chap­ters across the United States. An affiliate society was organized north of Dallas in Denison, previ­

ously a site for periodic Freethought activity, as early as 1880. 6

The tradition fostered by the National Liberal League is now represented in the Dallas region by a number of groups that exist across a spec­trum from anti-religious atheism to religious humanism.7 Although many that reject the exis­tence of a deity also reject religion, through the

twentieth century several organizations emerged that have affirmed what they see as the virtues of religion (the An1erican Humanist Association, the An1erican Ethical Union), especially the promo­tion of a moral life and the nurturing of commu­nity. While most advocating such a pro-religion stance adopted the label humanist, increasingly

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self-identified atheists have begun to take a look at the value of religion.8 A pioneering group in that endeavor is the North Texas Church of Freethought, founded in 1995, whose members see themselves as non-theists, but who also want

to promote the positive aspects of church life. While similar groups have emerged nationally and internationally in recent years, the Dallas-based church was the first.

Not ready to be fully identified with the more extreme position taken by atheists and freethinkers, Unitarians espoused a Christianity that discarded the trinitarian deity of the main­strean1 churches while seeking a more simpli­

fied approach to understanding salvation and the central role of Jesus in the Christian life. They found common cause with the Jewish commu­nity, and in the spring of 1899, Daniel Christian Limbaugh took the opportunity to describe the Unitarian position at a gathering held at Temple

Emanu-El in Dallas. That meeting became the catalyst for the formation of the First Unitarian Church ofDallas.9

The Twentieth Century North Texas entered the new century with

the religious community dominated by the main­

strean1 of Protestant Christianity, but the harmony of that world would soon be shattered by the Fundan1entalist-Modernist controversy, which

had one of its major originating points at First Congregational Church in Dallas. The congrega­

tion was pastored by Cyrus I. Scofield (1843-1921), a colleague of Fundan1entalist evangelist Dwight FMoody, and author of the notes for the Scefield Reference Bible, the primary biblical text used by American Fundamentalists. 10 During his tenure as the church's pastor (1883-1895), he absorbed the

dispensational approach to biblical interpretation developed by Irish minister John Nelson Darby

(1800-1882), and during his second term as pastor (1903-1905) he worked on his notes for the Bible, finally published in 1909 .11

Scofield would set the stage for the emer­gence of]. Frank Norris at First Baptist in Fort Worth beginning in 1909; Lewis Sperry Chafer (1871-1952), who became the pastor of First Congregational Church12 (now the Scofield Memorial Church) in 1921 and the founder of the Evangelical Theological College (now Dallas Theological Senlinary), one of Fundamentalism's most enduring educational institutions; and John R . Rice (1895-1980), founder of the Sword of the Lord Ministries. Each of the three, like Scofield,

emerged as national spokespersons for the move­ment while creating the image of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex as a major center of the most conservative wing of Protestant thought.

While Fundamentalism would split most of the Protestant mainstrean1 denonlinations in the 1920s and 1930s, no one saw it as a fringe movement. That was not the case with the other dissenting movement that challenged mainstream churches in Texas through the early twentieth century-Pentecostalism. The Pentecostal move­ment, centered upon its advocacy of the experi­ence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the evidence of that experience demonstrated in the believers' speaking in an unknown tongue, began in Topeka, Kansas, in 1901 but spread quickly to Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. Its founder, Charles Fox Parhan1 (1873-1929), moved to Texas in 1905, and following his initial success in Houston, Pentecostal churches popped up around the state. 13 The movement emerged in Dallas in 1909 when ff Bosworth (1877-1958) moved to

town from the Christian communal city of Zion, Illinois, and opened the first Pentecostal church. Bosworth was an excellent orator who had had an in1pactful personal experience of divine healing, which had attracted him to Pentecostalism. As pastor of the new church, he especially empha­

sized healing as one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The Pentecostal movement set itself over

against the older churches by its insistence that the miraculous experiences described in the New Testan1ent as so essential to the first century

LEGACIES Spring 2016 19

church were available today. Meanwhile, most mainstream Protestants believed that miracles had occurred in biblical times to assist the church in its formative years but subsequently had largely ceased to exist. Mainstream Protestants were also offended by what they viewed as the Pentecostals' very disorderly style of worship, which they saw

as breaking the decorum that characterized their own worship.

In 1912 Bosworth sponsored what became one of the more famous events in early Pentecostal history, when he brought female healing evange­list Maria Woodworth-Etter (1844--1924), who had recently aligned with the new movement, to Dallas. She preached daily for several months, with many reporting healing and many others falling into a trance-like state during the services. The event not only led to the growth of the church in North Texas, but thrust Bosworth into the national spotlight of the rapidly expanding move­ment.14

Simultaneously, Pentecostalism attracted sup­port from within the African-American commu­nity, and as early as 1910, a small group of women in Fort Worth organized a prayer meeting which would evolve into the Love Chapel Church of God in Christ (1921). The Church of God in Christ (COGIC) was one of the original Pente­costal denominations, and the Dallas area one of its original homes, as its founding bishop, Charles H. Mason (1864-1961), had appointed Dallas Elder E. M. Page as the first Overseer ofTexas in 1907. 15

While African Americans found a home in COGIC, white Pentecostals in the state operated under several names, such as Apostolic Faith, but eventually most joined in the formation of the General Council of the Assemblies of God (1914). Texas actually had the largest contingent at the founding gathering held at Hot Springs, Arkansas, and an1ong those invited to join the national lead­ership of the new denomination would be F F Bosworth. Rather than accepting the invitation, however, he took the occasion to make public what had become a major problem with the

20 LEGACIES Spring 2016

emergent movement. For while Bosworth was an enthusiastic exponent of the view that the gifts of the Holy Spirit were alive and functioning in the contemporary church, he dissented from what had almost become the defining belief of the movement, that speaking in tongues constituted visible evidence that a believer had experienced

the baptism of the Holy Spirit. For years he had seen the healing gift at work, and quite indepen­

dently of speaking in tongues. He published his views in a pamphlet. Now at odds with the larger movement, he withdrew from the Assemblies

and soon afterwards from his Dallas pastorate to pursue his career as an itinerant healing evangelist.

The movement would continue sans Bosworth. It would operate on the fringe for several generations, but as its initial fervor calmed and the more mainstrean1 churches got used to its presence, it was slowly welcomed into the main­

stream, a rare occurrence for groups with such charismatic origins.

Both of the main alternative strean1S of the religious life-the metaphysical approach of Christian Science and Swedenborgianism, and the more skeptical approach of Unitarianism and Freethought-continued to grow even as the population of North Texas expanded through the early decades of the century into the years of World War II and beyond. The teachings initiated by Mary Baker Eddy would find new life in the 1940s with the founding in Dallas of what was

known as the Unity Church of Practical Chris­tianity by Rev. Ruth Gillespie, Unity like Chris­tian Science being open to female leadership. In 1968 Donald Curtis (1915-1997), one of the most popular New Thought ministers, moved to Dallas from Los Angeles and founded the Science of Mind Church and Institute. Shortly thereafter, Rev. Gillespie retired and her Unity congrega­tion merged with his church, the new congrega­tion becoming known as Unity Church of Dallas. Under Curtis's leadership, the church grew to some 1,000 members, aided by his popular radio ministry. 16

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tional independent New Thought churches also

serving the area. 17

The Religious Fringe Post-1965 Legal changes nationally in 1965 would alter

American religion in ways completely undreamed

ofby those who framed the new inmtigration law,

the changes being motivated by the more imme­

diate need to build an international coalition that

would back the United States in Vietnam. Coun­

tries of Southern and Southeastern Asia, insulted

by the American ban on Asian inmtigration in place since 1924, demanded a change as part of

the terms of their sharing in the growing hostili­

ties. The new law put the ring of Asian countries

stretching from India and Pakistan to Japan and

Korea on the same immigration quotas enjoyed

by European nations. The quotas would be filled annually from the moment they were imple­

mented, among the first to benefit being a then

obscure Hindu spiritual teacher-A. C. Bhak­

tivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896-1977), the

founder of the Hare Krishna movement (officially

the International Society for Krishna Conscious­

ness or ISKCON), who happened to be in the

United States on a tourist visa when the legisla­

tion came into effect.

Dallas and Houston were made ready to

receive the new immigrants from Asia with the

opening of Houston International Airport in 1969 and the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport (DFW)

in 1973. DFW grew to be the third busiest in

The Islamic Center of Dallas opened in the wake of large immigration from Southeast Asia in the 1970s.

LEGACIES Spring2016 21

North America with Houston close behind as the tenth, and both immediately began receiving flights from India carrying people with their new resident visas. Those seeking to make their home in the United States have tended to settle within

fifty miles of their arrival point in America, and to find a home in developing parts of the local

urban complex. Indian Americans tended to settle in the Dallas suburbs immediately south ofDFW (Irving, Arlington, and Grand Prairie) and to the northeast (Plano, Richardson, and Garland).

The new wave of Asian immigration had

two consequences. First, a number of religious teachers ready to introduce the American public to Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism arrived as part of the immigrant population.While most of these teachers made their home on the West Coast,

they began to build a national following and form groups in metropolitan centers across the country. They were assisted by the coincidental corning of age of the Baby Boom generation, which made far more young adults available to the job market than it could absorb. The "Street People" of the early 1970s, those not received into the job market, provided an immediate pool of prospec­tive recruits to the many new religious groups formed by the Asian teachers. The Street People also help create a burst of growth for some rela­tively new homegrown religions, most formed in the aftermath ofWorld War II, a few earlier.

The Dianetics movement, for example,

formed in the early 1950s out ofWichita, Kansas, was one such homegrown religion. Originally a pop psychology movement, it morphed into a reli­gious movement as its founder L. Ron Hubbard (1911-1986) discovered a spiritual element in his explorations of the human psyche. The result was the Church of Scientology, founded in 1954. The initial Dallas congregation formed a mere two years later, its first meetings being held in the downtown YMCA. While dealing with the ups and downs of the national church in subsequent decades, the congregation has experienced steady growth and opened its new large "ideal org" building in Irving in 2009.

22 LEGACIES Spring 2016

Meanwhile, the first group of Krishna devo­tees under the guidance of Swami Prabhupada came to Dallas in 1970 and a year later purchased a former church building in a residential section of East Dallas. Prabhupada came to town in 1972

for the formal installation of the deities. Through the next decade, the center became one of the

most important in the country, especially with the opening of its parochial school (termed the "gurukula ") in 1971 . Many of the most dedicated followers from around the country sent their chil­dren to Dallas to be raised and educated as Krishna

devotees. 18

Centers of the other new religions of the 1970s would open in Dallas, some coming and going, others prospering. ECKANKAR, for example, a representative of the Indian Sant Mat tradition, developed a small group in Dallas in the wake of the popularity of the books of founder Paul Twitchell ( d. 1971) on reincarnation and astral travel. Twitchell had regularly appeared in Dallas in the 1960s, leading the organization's annual Southwest Seminar. The local group continues to the present as the ECKANKAR Center of Dallas, with its base in Carrollton. 19

Even earlier, in the 1950s, the Unification Church, the most well-known and controversial of the new religions that can1e to prominence in the 1970s, began to develop in the 1950s with founder Korean evangelist Rev. Sun Myung Moon (1920-2012) sending Ms.Young Oon Kim

(1914-1989) to lead what was at the time called the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification ofWorld Christianity (HSA-UWC). Under her leadership, centers developed in San Francisco, Denver, and Washington, D.C. Then in 1963, she resigned as the president of HSA-UWC and nan1ed an American, Gordon Ross, as her successor. Unificationists were especially sensitive to political issues in both Korea and the United States, and the coincidence of the leadership tran­sition in HSA-UWC with the assassination of President Kennedy greatly affected it. Only two months after Kennedy's death, Ross left San Fran­cisco and began pioneering the church in Dallas.

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That congregation continues to the present as the Dallas Fanlliy Church, a reflection of the transfor­mations that HAS-UWC underwent to emerge in the new century as the Fanlliy Federation for

World Peace and Unification.20

Among the more notable representatives of the Western esoteric tradition are the modern Wiccans, followers of the ancient religious faith of pre-Christian Europe, which they see as an Earth-based nature religion. Best known for their practice of witchcraft and magic, they emerged across the United States in the 1960s. And amid the earliest centers ofWicca in An1erica we find a Dianic coven formed in Dallas in the late 1960s by Margan McFarland and Mark Roberts. The Wiccans are a polytheistic religion, but privi­

lege the Goddess, and the Dianics (who look to the goddess Diana as her primary embodi­ment) emphasize the feminist implications of their religion, although the Texas coven made

it clear that it was not a separatist women-only coven and included both men and woman an1ong its membership and leadership.21 Wicca is also a decentralized movement that welcomes grassroots leadership and now consists of numerous inde­pendent covens. Some have affiliated with one of the national Wiccan organizations like the Cove­nant of the Goddess, the Texas Council having been organized in 1995.

Wiccans have tended to keep a low profile, and although there are more than a dozen" covens" Qocal groups) in the Dallas Metroplex, they are almost invisible to the larger public. Individual witches will on occasion allow themselves to be interviewed by local media, and some participate

in various events such as the Dallas Psychic Fairs, while a few groups sponsor periodic open circles at which they provide contact points for those seeking to learn more about Goddess religion.

World Religions in the Metroplex

Islam Even as a number of Asian teachers joined

the spectrum of homegrown teachers of new

religious movements, many lay believers of Asian religions migrated to the United States and once

established searched for the means of reproducing the worship envirollll1ent of their homeland near their new residence. By the end of the 1970s,

they were ready to found a variety of new and very different worship centers. And while immi­

grants have arrived from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia, those from South Asia (India and Pakistan) formed the largest groups and took the lead. This observation is particularly important in terms of the establishment oflslan1 in North Texas.

Islam is often identified with the Middle East­Saudi Arabia where it originated, along with Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, the Muslim countries that have been most in the news. However, the

largest segment of the American Muslim comnrn­nity traces its heritage to India and Pakistan (some 40 percent) and the second largest group consists of African-American converts (some 30 percent),

leaving fewer than 30 percent originating from the various Middle Eastern countries.

Several Muslim worship centers vie for the title as the oldest mosque in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Most frequently cited is the Islanlic Society of Denton, which opened the first masjid built in the state ofTexas in 1981. The Islanlic Center of Austin had opened in 1977, but it inhabited a building previously used for other purposes. Actu­ally, however, the history of Islam in An1erica in

general and Texas in particular is a far more inter­esting story.

Islam had already began to spread to the South, to the African-An1erican community, by

LEGACIES Spring 2016 23

The North Texas Mosque in Richardson is now one of several in the North Central Texas region.

the 1930s, in the form of the Moorish Science Temple, led by African-American prophet Noble Drew Ali, and the Ahmadiyya Movement oflslan1, a Muslim revitalization movement that came to America from India in the 1920s. These two

earliest movements were followed by the Nation oflslan1 that permeated the country in the 1950s. The first mosque in Dallas seems to have been Mohan1illad's Mosque No. 48 of the old Nation of Islan1, which dates to 1968. It would experi­ence the changes that led to the dissolution of the Nation of Islan1 in the years after the death of its founder Elijah Muharnmad (1897-1975), follow the lead provided by his son Warith D. Muhanmud (1933-2008), and reemerge promi­nently in 2002, when it adopted a new name. The Dallas MasjidAl-Islam had by that time integrated into the growing Sunni Muslim community of Texas.22 Today there are more than sixty mosques in the DFW Metroplex.

24 LEGACIES Spring 2016

In addition to opening new mosques, in 1989 Metroplex Muslims joined together to found a charitable organization that raised money for people negatively affected by the unrest in Gaza and the West Bank. The Holy Land Foundation

for Relief and Development based in Richardson, Texas, grew to be the largest Islamic charity (in terms of money raised) operating in the United States. A problem developed, however, as the money raised and sent to the Middle East was funneled directly to the needy by representa­tives of Hamas, the organization that controlled the West Bank and Gaza.23 That problem became acute in 1993, when the United States declared Hanus a terrorist organization. In spite of that action, the foundation continued on its mission.

Then in the wake of the events of 9I 11, the

governn1ent designated the foundation itself as a terrorist organization and subsequently seized the organization's assets and closed it offices. In 2004, a

Dallas g; of its off

rial supr in a hu

convicti financin

rulings actions who do

respons1

Thisima

t1989 found ey for t Gaza

dation rrdson, ity (in

Jnited as the

st was :senta-

trolled

'ecame ~dared

Jf that ;s1on. 11, the

elf as a ~ed the

2004,a

Dallas grand jury charged the foundation and five of its officers and employees with providing mate­rial support to Hamas. Though a first trial ended in a hung jury, a second trial resulted in guilty

convictions in what became the largest terrorism financing prosecution in American history. The rulings that flowed out of the various courts' actions set a precedent in American law-those who donate funds to a known terrorist group are responsible for that terrorist group's actions.24

Hinduism Hinduism appears to have come to Dallas

initially in the 1920s as the California-based Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) led by Swami Paramahansa Yogananda (1893-1952), one of the few Indian teachers to settle in America before the 1924 ban on Asian immigration. He devel­oped mail-order lessons to spread his version of Hinduism based around the practice of Kriya Yoga. It was not until 1971, however, that a local

This image of the Goddess Durgha occupies a central place at the Hindu Temple in Irving.

LEGACIES Spring 2016 25

-;

Dallas area group began to form, a public lecture held on the fellowship's behalf at the Fairmount Hotel in Dallas being the catalyst for its forma­tion. After meeting in rented facilities for many years, the group found a more permanent home

in Irving in 1994.25

Through the 1980s, the new wave of Hindu

believers from India who had begun arriving in the late 1960s had only the Hare Krishna temple at which to find worship that resembled what they were used to from their homeland. However, in 1981 a small group met and proposed creating a new temple that could serve the varied needs of the emerging Indian conununity. That proposal led to the founding of the D / FW Hindu Temple. In 1988 temple leadership purchased land in Irving, a site central to the Metroplex, and worship was initiated in a house located on the land while construction of a new temple conunenced.

Hinduism is divided into three major tradi­tions, the Vaishnavas (whose main deity is Vishnu), Saivites (whose main deity is Shiva), and Goddess worshippers (whose worship centers on Durga and/or Kali). Hare Krishna believers are, for example, Vaishnavas who focus upon one partic­ular incarnation ofVishnu-Krishna. In contrast, the new temple in Irving was designed to provide space for worship in all three major traditions, and eventually it even provided space for some of the smaller traditions devoted to additional deities in the Hindu pantheon such as Gayatri Devi. In

India, temples almost never mixed deities from the several traditions; however, in the United States, the mixed tradition temple has become common­

place. Even as the Irving temple was being devel­

oped, devotees of Swarninarayan in the Dallas area had initiated gatherings and in 1989 found a vacant church building in Grand Prairie, Texas, which they purchased, renovated and opened as the first Swaminarayan temple in North Texas. The Swarninarayan movement is a Vaishnava movement that originated in the Indian state of Gujarat; it was, founded by a Krishna devotee, Swami Narayan (1781-1830), in the early nine-

26 LEGACIES Spring 2016

teenth century. Before his death, he divided the movement into two factions, one serving the northern half of Gujarat and the other the southern.A third division developed at the begin­ning of the twentieth century. This third Swami­

narayan group, the Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swam.inarayan Sanstha (generally

referred to simply as BAPS) , is by far the largest segment of the movement in the United States (with more than a hundred thousand devotees),

and has become known for building the largest Hindu temples in the Western world (including

one in Houston). The Grand Prairie temple is associated with

the southern Swaminarayan group, known in the West as the Shree Swarninarayan Satsang Mandal. The BAPS organization has recently erected its own new temple in Irving, while the northern group has yet to open a temple in Dallas (though it has a large temple in Houston). In addition, one of the smaller splinters, the Shree Swarninarayan Gurukul, USA, has its only American center in Plano.26

Since the opening of the DFW Hindu Temple and the arrival of the Swarninarayan believers, a number of new Hindu temples have opened, most either in the suburbs south of the airport or in Dallas's northwest suburbs. The great majority of these new temples serve one of the three main Hindu traditions such as the Sri Ganesh Temple (aka the Hindu Temple of North Texas) in Plano, primarily a Shavite temple, though offering space

for Vaishnavas and Goddess worshippers, or the Hindu Temple of Frisco, which is primarily a Vaishnava temple but with space for Shaivite and goddess worship, and even a murti (statue) of Sai Baba ofShirdi (d. 1918), a modern holy man who has developed a large following. In fact, in 2004, Sai Baba devotees in the Dallas Area opened a temple in Plano exclusively for the veneration of

the saint. In 1990, even as the Indian Hindu conunu­

nity was emerging and building its own temples, the original Krishna temple was being confronted with a crisis that threatened its very existence. A former student at the Dallas gurukula nan1ed

Raghun; of the As

in whid: he and< Over th

other Kr the forrr

to confi: process ,

what ha the scho includll: of medi1 crinllnal

individu the forr ISKCOI

recently Catholic

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abused t forming own ill\

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lled out : it soon

1en Tao ing the

1munity

In Summary The DFW Metroplex is now home to the full

spectrum of the world's religions, and this essay has

been but a first attempt to outline what the story

of religion in the region might look like given the rich diversity to be found here. A dozen or so Christian churches organized their first Texas

congregations in the immediate aftermath of the Texas revolution, and the Christian movement has continued to grow as the population has increased

and decade by decade claimed a greater percentage of the residents an1ong its members. By the mid

twentieth century, Christianity could boast having half the population on its rolls, and it continued

in an upward trajectory, now including some 75 percent. It has done so, of course, at the cost of dividing into literally hundreds of denominations. Meanwhile, in the decades following the Civil War, a variety of competing groups began to appear and to grow both in number and percentage of the

population.

In this initial attempt to assemble a picture of

the present religious community and how it devel­oped, we have been able to highlight only a few

major trends and point to only a few incidents

indicative of the many ways that the alternative religiosities have both contributed to the Metro­

plex's spiritual development and affected the status of religion on the national stage. I hope it will provide a foundation upon which future explora­

tions can proceed. Since few activities in which Americans engage

reach the levels of participation clain1ed by religion, it is not surprising that it has been integral to the

development of the region. Religious leaders from the mainstrean1 churches have struggled to make society more closely conform to their ideals, while

members of the alternative religions struggle to make place for themselves in the larger religious and secular realm, and those opposed to religion seek a

voice with which they can offer their critique. Given the present situation we can but predict that a lively

and interesting interaction between the various parts of the religious community will continue through the decade in1mediately before us. •

NOTES 1 For the basic statistics on American religion, see: Clif­

ford Gramm.ich et al, 2010 U.S. Religious Census: Religious Congregations & Membership Study (N.p.: Association of Statisticians of American R eligious Bodies, 2012); Eileeen W Lindner, ed. Yearbook ef A merican & Canadian Churches 2012 (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2012); and J. Gordon Melton, Melton's Encyclopedia ef A merican Religion (Detroit: Gale/ Cengate Learning, 8th edition. 2009).

2Much of the data from which th.is essay has been constructed has been gathered from research conducted in the DFW M etroplex beginning in 2010. During the past five years, I have attempted to visit many of the centers discussed below, especially those founded by Asian Ameri­cans since 1965, to gather their publications, and to track their presence on the Internet.

3The R estoration movement now exists as three denominations-the Churches of Christ, the C hristian C hurch (Disciples of Christ), and the Christian C hurches and Churches of Christ.

4Although there is a vast literature on the major Chris­tian denominations in Texas, no one has yet attempted a history of Texas religjon or even a history of Christianity in Texas. A few chapters in some of the general histories ofTexas have begun to recognize religions as a topic to be included in the discussion ofTexas' heritage. See, for example, John W Storey, "Pagodas Amid the Steeples: The Changing R eligious Landscape;' in John W Storey and Mary L. Kelley, eds. 1i11entieth-Cent11ry Texas: A Social and Cultural History (Denton, TX: North Texas University Press, 2008): 135-63.

5Wayne Alvord, "T. L. Nugent: Texas Populist;' South­western Historical Quarterly, 57 Ouly 1953); Donna A. Barnes, Farmers in Rebellion: 711e Rise and Fall ef the Southern Farmers Alliance and People's Party in Texas (Austin: University ofTexas Press, 1984).

6Steven R. Butler. "The Infidels of Denison," Legacies 27, no. 2 (Fall 2015): 32-49; and " Freethinkers: R eligious Non-Conformity in Dallas, 1879-1904," Legacies 24, no. 3 (Fall 2012): 16-29.

7Stephan.ie Embree, "Atheist churches provide a community for Dallas nonbelievers,'' Th.e Dallas Morning News Oanuary 5, 2016) . Posted at http://www.dallasnews. com/ news/ religion/ 20140808-atheist-churches-provide-a­comrnunicy-for-dallas-non believers.ece.

8Alain de Botton, Religion fo r A theists: A Non-believer's Guide to the Uses ef Religion (N ew York: Pantheon Books, 2013).

"Wayne Gard, Unitarianism in Dallas, 1899- 1968 (Dallas: First Unitarian Church, 1973).

10Schefield R efere1ue Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1909).

" George M. M.arsden, F11ndamentalis111 and A merican Culture (New York: O xford University Press, 2006); C harles

LEGACIES Spring 2016 29

The Korean Buddhist Temple in Richardson is one of several Buddhist temples serving various Asian immigrant groups.

page of the nation's newspapers for a year. While still in Taiwan, Hon-Ming Chen (b. 1955) had founded Chen Tao, aka God's Salvation Church, a new religion combining Buddhism with elements ofTaoism and Christianity. Then in the 1990s, he moved with many of his followers to the United

States and settled in Garland in 1997. He seems to have chosen Garland because to his ear the city's name sounded like "God's Land," and once settled in Garland, he let the media in on some of the group's more unusual beliefS. Reporters soon discovered, for example, that they identified two young boys in the group as Jesus and Buddha returned to earth. That belief, however, faded in light of their announcement that they had chosen Garland as their place to view God's visible arrival on Earth and His assumption of human form, an event they predicted would occur on March 31, 1998, at Chen's home.

This prediction above all other beliefS focused

28 LIEGACIES Spring 2016

the media attention on the group, not all of it flat­tering. The scrutiny pressed more firmly upon them as the March date arrived and God failed to appear. Then, after Chen publicly acknowl­edged that he seems to have misunderstood God's plans, the group began to dissipate. A number of

members who had arrived in Texas had to return home as their tourist visas were running out. The remnant of the continuing community pulled out of Garland and relocated to New York, but it soon afterwards disintegrated and eventually Chen Tao disappeared altogether. Meanwhile, during the whole episode, the larger Buddhist community simply kept their distance.

In Su The

spectrurr been but of religic the rich so Chris

congreg;i Texas re' continue

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twentietl half the m an up percent. dividing Meanwb a variety to grow populatic

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Raghunatha published a lengthy essay, "Children of the Ashram: Breaking the Silence ofISKCON," in which he recounted the pervasive n1istreatn1ent

he and other children had endured as students.27

Over the next several years, sinlliar stories from other Krishna gurukulas emerged. By n1id-decade, the former students organized and began directly

to confront the organization which was still in

process of getting over its initial unbelief about what had occurred. The students now accused

the school's leadership with a spectrum of crin1es including regular beatings and canings, the denial of medical care, and sexual molestation. Even as

crin1inal proceedings were initiated against their individual teachers and administrators, in 2000,

the former pupils filed a civil lawsuit against ISKCON, having engaged a lawyer who had recently handled abuse cases against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Dallas.

Unlike the Catholic Church, which had attempted to suppress news about abuse, protect

priests who had abused people, and pay off the

abused to silence them, ISKCON responded by forn1ing a Child Protection Office that began its own investigation of accused abusers, empow­

ering knowledgeable scholars to investigate and report directly to it on the abuse, and seek to both

address its past and reform its practice to prevent any future reoccurrence. The legal proceedings continued through the decade, and at one point

threatened the entire movement, but in the end the cases were settled in such a way that the move­ment could both recover and meet the needs of

the abused survivors. Through the process the Dallas temple survived, although, like other

ISKCON temples, its constituency has changed from primarily An1erican converts to first and

second generation Indian Americans. 28

Buddhism Until the 1960s, American Buddhism was

largely limited to Hawaii and the West Coast and consisted mostly of centers following the

different forms of Japanese Buddhism. While a few Buddhists established themselves in various metropolitan areas across the nation, none found

their way to Texas.That all changed in 1965, when immigrants from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Korea began relocating to the Lone Star State,

and Chinese immigrants from Taiwan and Hong Kong took the lead in opening the first Buddhist

temples in Houston. Buddhism in Dallas was especially affected by

the immigration of large numbers ofVietnan1ese

Buddhists immediately after the end of the Vietnam War (1975), inmugration quotas being briefly suspended to allow thousands of refugees to enter in mass. Also, to accommodate the new residents, the federal government developed a

plan to place them evenly across the country, each state receiving an allotment based on its popula­tion size. The Vietnan1ese were relatively poor and it took a decade for them to settle in and begin to prosper. They opened the first Vietnan1ese Buddhist temple in Texas, Chua Buu Mon, in Port Arthur, in south Texas, in 1987. Currently,

there are over 20,000 Vietnamese residing in North Texas, again concentrated in the san1e two areas that other Asians have made their homes.

And thus it comes as no surprise that we find the main temples in Irving and Garland, with what is

possibly the largest being Chua D ao Quang, one of the Garland temples.

Along with the Vietnamese temples, smaller

groups of Buddhists of a variety of national backgrounds-Korean, Chinese, Sri Lankan,

Burmese-have quietly settled in the Metro­plex, and opened temples to meet the needs of their people-the language barriers serving as an

obstacle blocking the formation of multi-ethnic

multi-national Buddhist centers. Over the last decades, Texas Buddhists have

rarely broken into the news, although one group of Taiwanese Buddhists put Dallas on the front

LEGACIES Spring 2016 27

L.Trumbell , 17ie Life Story of C. I. Scofield (N ew York: O xford University Press; 1920); B. Dwain Waldrep, Lewis Sperry Chofer and the Development of Interdenominational Frmdamen­talism in the South, 1900-50 (Auburn,AL:Auburn University, 2001) ; R obert L. Summer,j o/111 R . Rice ... Man Sent.from Cod (Murfreesboro. TN: Sword of the Lord Publishers, 1980).

12First Congregational church withdrew from the national organization of Congregational churches in 1908 and has existed as an independent congregation since that time.

13James Goff, Fields Wlrite unto Harvest: Charles F. Parham and the Missionary Origins of Pentecostalism (Fayetteville, Al~: University of Arkansas Press, 1989).

14R oscoe Barnes, Ill , F. F. Bosworth: Tire Man Behind Christ the Healer (Newcastle-upon Tyne, UK: Can1bridge Scholars Publishing, 2009).

15" History of Greater Love Chapel Church of God in Christ." Posted at: http :// greaterlovechapel.com/ who-we­are/ church-history.

16Unity of Dallas. htt_p://unitydallas.org/ . 17The longest-lived New Thought church in the

Metroplex is the Christ Truth Foundation of Fort Worth, originally founded in 1938.

18Sri Sri R adha-Kalachandji Mandir Hare Krishna Temple. hn_p://radhakalachandji.com/ #.

19ECKANKAR in Texas. htt_p: //www.eckankar-texas. org/ site/ centers/ dallas/ .

20Michael L Mickler, A History ofTlie Unification Cfnrrch in America, 1959-1974 (N ew York: Garland Publishing, 1993). See especially chapter 3, "Emergence of a National Movement," which is posted at: htt_p:/ / unification.org/ ucbooks/ Huca/ Huca-03.htm.

21 Mark R oberts, An Introduction to Dia11ic Witch­craft (Dallas: the Mother Grove, n.d. (1973?]). McFarland 's journey to Wicca is discussed in Margo Adler, Drawing Down

30 LEGACIES Spring 2016

the Moon : Witches, Dnrids, Goddess- Worshippers and Other Pagans in America Today (N ew York: Viking, 1979).

22lmam Khalid Shalleed, "Looking Ahead: Community Focus will Continue as Dallas Masjid Al-Islam," Tire Dallas Morning News Qanuary 4, 2014). Posted at: htt_p://www. dallasnews. com/ news/ community-news/ white-rock-east­dallas/headli n es/201 40104-looking-ahead-communi ty­focus-will-continue-at-dallas-masjid-al-islam.ece. In the 1980s, Louis Farrakhan would open a new Dallas center of his revived Nation of Islam, and give it the old name of Muhan1mad's Mosque No. 48.

230n Hanus, see Shaul Mishal and Avrallam Sela, T/:re Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence, and Coexistence (N ew York: Columbia University Press, 2006) and/ or, Sara R oy, Hamas and Civil Society in Caza: Engaging the Islamist Social Sector (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).

24Laura B. Rowe, "Ending Terrorism with Civil R eme­dies: Boim V Holy Land Foundation and the Proper Frame­work of Liability," Seventh Cirwit R eview 4, no. 2 (Spring 2009): 372-427.

25Dallas-Ft. Worm Meditation Group of Self-Realiza­tion Fellowship. htt_p:// srfdallasforrworth.org/ .

26R aymond Brady Williams, An Introduction to Swami­narayan Hinduism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

27Posted at: http: //www.surrealist.org/ gurukula/ time­line/ children.html. R etrieved December 15, 2015.

28011 the Krishna saga, see Burke Rochford, Jr., Hare Krishna Traniforrned (N ew York: N ew York University Press, 2007)